Review of The Revenant (2015) by Nikolayg — 10 Jan 2016

A pointless drawn out exercise in continual extreme violence.

Blood all over people's faces as they tear raw flesh out of bison and eat it, or eat fish alive as they wriggle in their hands; flesh being torn off human bones up close in detail, skulls being blown off. A woman being dragged into the woods and raped. A hot burning stick being applied sizzling to a neck wound. This is the single most violent movie I have ever seen - Tarantino is a walk in the park compared to this. Revenant is easily far and away the longest stretch of up close detailed granular violence of any movie in history. You would have to be either completely anesthetized or a sociopath not to find this film totally and completely disgusting.

The story - is there a story? - barely. The story is as simple revenge story. Twenty years ago it would have starred Mel Gibson. But it would not have dragged on for over two and a half hours. I wanted to leave halfway through but I stayed because I was with a friend.

I should add that the beating DiCaprio takes gets to the point where it is just so unbelievable, at one point, where he falls off a cliff but an evergreen tree breaks his fall, it was so much like Wile E. Coyote, that the audience burst out laughing. It wasn't supposed to be funny. It was just so ridiculous.

From now on I'm going to be much more careful about what I see in theaters. I feel that Revenant not only wasted 4 hours of my life (door to door) but took something from me. I left feeling abused, broken, dispirited. And for what? This movie had no true drama. No true characterization of anyone, not even of Dicaprio's character, and it had no point.

Yes some of the cinematography was nice. That's why I give it a 3.